This longitudinal study will investigate the cognitive and social mechanisms involved in the social construction of autobiographical memory during early childhood. The conceptual model that provides the theoretical framework for this research integrates findings relating to the co-construction of personal narratives about the past, the development of social metacognition, the development of self-knowledge, and the development of parent-child attachment. This study will extend findings which show that the narrative styles parents use when talking to their children about the past predict the amount and quality of children's recall of past events. The first objective is to test the prediction that the development of social metacognitive skills moderates the relation between maternal narrative style and children's recall of past events, including the amount and narrative structure. Moreover, social metacognitive skill is expected to predict the coherence of children's discourse. The second objective is to test the hypothesis that the development of the self-concept moderates the relation between maternal narrative style and children's recall about past events, including the amount and narrative structure. The third objective is to test the hypothesis that references to the emotional aspects of past events during mother-child conversation predict the emotional content of children's recall and the development of knowledge about self. A fourth objective is to test the hypothesis that security of mother-child attachment predicts mothers' use of an elaborate narrative style, mothers' references to the emotional aspects of past events, and the coherence of mother-child discourse. Children will participate at 34, 42, 50, 58, and 70 months of age. Mothers and children will talk together about a set of events. One week later, researchers will interview children about these events and about a different set of events. Children will complete standard tasks used frequently in research on children's theory of mind to assess their social metacognitive skills. They will complete two measures of self-understanding the Children's Self-View Questionnaire, which assesses an understanding of the psychological self, and an assessment of the understanding of the temporally extended self, or that the self exists across time. Mothers will complete the Attachment Q-set, which assesses the security of mother-child attachment. Conversations will be coded for mothers' narrative style, children's recall, discourse coherence, and emotional content. Children's memory reports will be coded for the amount recalled, narrative structure, and emotional content. The results of this study will focus on the development of memory. However, the findings will contribute to a more general understanding of the family processes involved in the social construction of cognition, affect, and behavior.
